1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a karaoke apparatus having a capability of attaching a harmony voice to a singing voice inputted through a microphone.
2. Description of Related Art
A karaoke apparatus is constructed such that a singing voice picked up by a microphone is mixed with an orchestral sound reproduced from a music source in accompaniment with the singing voice, and the mixed result is outputted from a loudspeaker.
Recently, karaoke apparatuses having a capability of giving a harmonic effect to a singing voice have been developed. In a karaoke apparatus of this type, pitch shift through the process of turning up or down a scale is performed on a singing voice inputted through a microphone so that a harmony voice made consonant to the singing voice is generated. The harmony voice is added to the original singing voice and a resultant composite sound is released from a loudspeaker together with karaoke accompaniment.
In the above-mentioned conventional karaoke apparatuses, if two units of microphones are used to collect duet singing voices, corresponding analog signals provided by these microphones are mixed together. The mixed signal is pitch-shifted to generate a harmony voice signal. Consequently, even if a desired harmony voice is intended to be added to only one of the duet singing voices inputted from one microphone, a parallel harmony voice is also added to the other singing voice inputted from the other microphone, thereby failing to attach different harmony voices to different singing voices.
The above-mentioned conventional harmonic effect generating capability thus lacks flexibility, and discourages karaoke players who wish to enjoy harmonic effects. For example, one solo singer may wish to be backed by five chorus parts. In such a case, if harmony voices of four virtual singers were attached to an actual singing voice inputted from another of the two microphones, one of the two real singers could perform solo vocal and the other real singer could perform a back-chorus of five parts for backing the solo vocal. The back-chorus could be composed of four virtual parts synthetically generated by the harmonic effect generating capability and one real part voiced by the other singer. However, as discussed the conventional karaoke apparatus derives the harmony voice from the composite voice signal obtained by mixing the singing voices inputted through the multiple microphones, thereby failing to provide variable backing chorus modes such as those mentioned above. In another example a back-chorus might be given to only one of the duet singers during progression of karaoke music in a duet performance. To realize such a chorus mode by utilizing the harmonic effect generating capability of a karaoke apparatus, a harmony voice must be independently attached to the singing voices captured from the microphones at a desired timing. However, any of the conventional karaoke apparatuses cannot satisfy such a requirement.